And the fact that there are primarily three reasons FOR them. In chronological order: the Baby Boom, Automation and Outsourcing.

And since there is no way to put THOSE three genies back in their bottles, Britain is screwed – right?

Well – not necessarily.

You see, there is a FOURTH reason for the chronic unemployment that blights Blighty – and caused the recent riots. It is the SYSTEM that Britain’s industry has evolved, over the last several decades. It is DEEPLY flawed – but it COULD be FIXED. Here’s how…

The average Brit puts on his company car every morning and goes to work. And after an hour or more CRAWLING through the rush-hour traffic, he arrives at his place of employment – ALREADY KNACKERED.

He HATES his job, but will take ALL the overtime he can get, in order to pay his bills. And one of those bills is his TAX bill – a large part of which goes to support those who HAVE no job.

And if he doesn’t get promoted every few years, his long hours doing the same old same old, day in and day out, will eventually cause him to SNAP, smash everything around him and go lie in a corner in the foetal position, crying.

At which point, his company medical cover will take over and after a few weeks on downers, he will return and continue – as a broken man.

But it DOESN’T have to BE this way.

Let us take two companies: Delta Holdings and Omega Industrial – both of which make… glandle-hooks.

Now, Delta has a thousand employees, all working forty-hour weeks – while Omega has five hundred employees who, with overtime, work EIGHTY-hour weeks.

But here’s the thing: Omega’s glandle-hooks will cost LESS to make. So eventually, Delta will go BUST.

Why? Because Omega may pay more in total for its labour costs (assuming overtime pays one-and-a-half rates) but Delta is paying for a THOUSAND company cars, employee insurance packages and employee health, dental and what-have-you packages – as opposed to Omega’s FIVE HUNDRED.

And those packages are charged PER EMPLOYEE – NOT per employee-hour-worked.

And THAT is the nub of the problem.

Company cars cost an employer almost as much as the EMPLOYEE does. And once you factor in the cost of those employee insurance and health packages…

Which is why companies that declare massive profits immediately make half their workforces REDUNDANT – they want to make even MORE profit.

So what can be DONE about this insanity? Actually, more than you might think…

Company Cars. Many of these are only used to ferry employees to and from work. Like the employee health packages, they are nothing more than a ploy to force them to STAY with the employer. Quit your job and you lose your CAR – and you and your family have to revert to the tender mercies of the NHS.

It’s like the “tied cottages” of yore – “When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

But if HMG brought in laws that required company cars to be SIGN-WRITTEN – and only permitted them to be used for COMPANY BUSINESS – employees could buy their OWN car for private motoring and use the TRAIN to get to work.

This would have MAJOR benefits. The obvious GREEN ones – and employees would arrive at work FRESH.

However, ANOTHER measure would have to be taken by HMG first. While no-one wants to see a return to the Fifties – where many cars belched smoke, had bald tyres, mediocre brakes and rust holes in the floors – the modern MOT test has gotten RIDICULOUS.

What started as a sensible idea to make Britain’s roads safer – has today turned cars into a financial LIABILITY. The test has become SO draconian that many cars rolling off ASSEMBLY-LINES could fail it. It’s like PC – it’s gone TOO FAR.

But HMG could rethink it, so that only REAL safety features would be covered – and second-hand cars could make a COME-BACK. Here in Thailand, I drive a Mitsubishi Galant Ultima that cost twenty thousand pounds when new. I bought it at nine years old, for four thousand. It is now eighteen years old and is STILL worth at least two thousand.

In Britain, I couldn’t GIVE it away. It would most likely have been JUNKED, YEARS ago. But with careful maintenance, my chariot still goes like a bird – and is SAFE.

Employee Insurance Packages. HMG could force insurance companies to charge companies PER EMPLOYEE-HOUR-WORKED. This would mean a company’s employee numbers would no longer be relevant, insurance-wise. Simple.

Employee Health (and dental, etc.) Packages. Levy a huge TAX on them – to be paid by the EMPLOYERS – and pay the money raised to the NHS! HAH!!

And finally: give companies tax breaks, based on the number of employees they have, versus their turnover – the more employees, the higher the breaks – and limit overtime to TEN hours per week, per employee.

If HMG did all of THAT, unemployment would disappear OVERNIGHT!

But naturally, they won’t. It would ruffle FAR too many INFLUENTIAL feathers. The car manufacturers, “private” healthcare companies and insurance companies – to name but three.

No, HMG will do what it’s ALWAYS done: LIE about life-expectancy figures and try to RAISE the age of retirement – blather on about “job creation” – and order more water cannons to help quell the NEXT round of RIOTS.

The term “sweeping changes” is oft-used by politicians. But the last time such changes were ACTUALLY invoked was to create The Welfare State – a state that has been DECIMATED by HMG during the last thirty years.

Mind you, the above changes ALONE would create a bunch of NEW problems, which would ALSO need addressing. Like, if hard-pressed employees could not earn overtime money – how would they manage to continue to support their families on a single wage?

If they had KIDS, their wives could not work – even though there would now be jobs FOR them.

It’s called the “knock-on effect” – and HMG would have to consider THAT fall-out as well.

The fact is, Britain has driven down a social and economic CUL DE SAC. And going back is not an option. The only solution is to BULLDOZE through the house at the end. I’m just glad it’s not MY house.

Mine is in THAILAND – where EVERYONE has a job.

Of course, this is only achieved by MASSIVE over-manning and a LOW cost of living. But it WORKS – which is why Thailand is known as The Land Of Smiles.

Britain could learn a LOT from this place…

And yet, she endures as an icon – including to many who were not even born when she lived.

Why? What made this troubled movie goddess unique? It was the fact that she DID NOT EXIST.

Norma Monroe INVENTED her. As a child, she had idolised the movie goddesses of the day: Lana Turner and in particular – Jean Harlow. THEY were what a movie goddess should be like.

And thus it was that Norma Jeane Monroe (Baker was foisted on her by her even MORE troubled mother) developed the character of Marilyn Monroe.

Which goes a long way to explaining why her life was so fraught. ALL the time she was in public or on set – she had to BE Marilyn Monroe.

When she played a part, it was not Norma Jeane Monroe playing it – it was Norma Jeane Monroe playing Marilyn Monroe playing the part. No wonder she became frazzled.

In another place in these chronicles, this writer was accused of INVENTING explanations of behaviour – until he responded by quoting authoritative sources for his statements (see the comments under “Morpheus on… Erroll Garner”) and will therefore retell a personal account which ILLUSTRATES the above paragraph.

The story hails from Norma’s friend, confidante and fellow-actress, Shelley Winters. Early one Fifties morning, the two were walking through the streets of New York City – when Shelley realised the superstar beside her was able to do so, unnoticed.

“This is New York – how come you’re not being inundated by your fans?” she enquired. Norma laughed and said, “Because I’m not being HER.” “What do you mean?” asked Shelley. “Do you want to SEE… her?” replied Norma. Puzzled, Shelley said yes.

At once, she witnessed a TRANSFORMATION. Norma shook her hair free of her headscarf and began to accentuate her walk. Her whole body language changed. She was ON.

Within seconds, the two women were MOBBED.

Amidst the melee, Norma caught Shelley’s eye – the two exchanged a nod – and Shelley UNDERSTOOD.

Fifty years, next August.

B.F.D., I hear you say – but then YOU were probably born after 1970.

Meaning that by the time you were old enough to learn that some people fancied members of their OWN sex (or indeed, to discover YOU fancied members of your own sex) homosexuality was LEGAL. Even socially tolerated.

But not so in the Fifties – and it was in those far-off days that Rock and Dirk were the most popular leading men in the movies. Rock in the States – and Dirk in Britain.

Thus, when Confidential Magazine outed Rock, his management had no CHOICE but to take action. If he had come out – his career would have GONE out. And while, during the Seventies, America’s society slowly began to accept homosexuality – its confused legislation on the matter (much of it concerning sodomy) remained at least partially in place until 2003 (yes: only THEN was it legalised nationwide).

Meaning Rock had little choice but to keep up his pretence to the bitter end – even to the extent of blaming an earlier blood transfusion for his condition, as he was DYING from AIDS.

It was a damn shame. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who had a bad word to say about Rock. He was a sweetheart. But – while he rarely gave them – those who WERE able to get an interview with him often reported that whilst being charming, Rock had always kept his DISTANCE. He had never opened up.

Only later, did they discover WHY.

He had married in the Fifties, but his wife had been merely a BEARD (his agent’s secretary, no less) a ploy designed to bolster his image. After a quickie divorce with minimal alimony, he remained single for the rest of his life. But he had many friends inside Hollywood, most of whom knew his “secret” – and KEPT it right up to the end.

And while Rock had been America’s heart-throb, in Britain that role was filled by Dirk Bogarde.

Coming from upper-class stock, Dirk entered the movies in stiff-upper-lip parts – interspersed with the lead in the long-running “Doctor…” series of films, where he was always up to his stethoscope in voluptuous nurses.

The term “matinée idol” was MADE for him. (In public, he had to wear suits with no flies in the trousers, to protect his dangly bits from hoards of screaming girls – and all of this before The Beatles).

His fan-mail at Rank Studios filled ROOMS. But in 1961, all of that abruptly CHANGED with the film “Victim” - in which he played a gay lawyer, being blackmailed over his sexuality. Many believe the film led DIRECTLY to homosexuality being (sort of) legalised in Britain, in 1967.

However, while Bogarde’s fan-mail STOPPED virtually overnight, his career did not. He began a whole NEW one, appearing in heavyweight, sometimes art-house dramas – often playing gay or at least ambiguous characters.

But despite this – and the 1967 Act – Dirk utterly DENIED being gay, for his whole life. Even in the many autobiographies he wrote, as part of his second career in the Seventies – that of a successful author.

His persona became that of a semi-retired LONER, living in rural France. (The partner he in fact LIVED with was his manager, who had earlier married and fathered a child – but Dirk NEVER married).

Like Rock, Dirk remained a private person. But UNlike Rock, he did not HAVE to. As a writer, he had the opportunity to EXPLORE and TALK about the issue. But his early upbringing appears to have won the day.

As far as Dirk was concerned, his sexuality was no-one’s damn business except HIS.

Of course, now everyone knows which celebs are gay – and for the most part, could care less. But fifty years ago, it was a BIG DEAL. And while the public expected to see stars do extraordinary things on the screen – they expected them to be just like the guy-next-door in their private lives.

Which would have been absurd. Show business is like no other business. It requires talents that are NOT ordinary. And at the risk of stereotyping (oh, go on – stereotype away) it is a fact that gay men are on the whole more CREATIVE and EMOTIONAL than straight dudes.

Therefore, is it any surprise that showbiz has more than its share of gay men? But in the Fabulous Fifties – being fabulous was not ACCEPTABLE.

Thus (in alphabetical order) Harry Andrews, Raymond Burr, Richard Chamberlain, Jimmy Edwards, Farley Granger, Eric Portman, Richard Wattis – and MANY others – had to stay SCHTUM.

(Really? Oh yes. If I’d included Liberace, Noël Coward, Charles Hawtrey and certain others in the list, you could have been forgiven for saying, “No shit, Sherlock.” But I’ll bet you didn’t know about ALL of the above!)

The other replies, “Oh, they’re the people who got cremated.”

Hmm. Well – religion aside – I am still insisting on cremation when MY time comes. Why? CLASS – that’s why.

All of our lives, we are dogged by it. In America, they HAVE no class – so it’s about MONEY. Although some differentiate between what they call OLD money and NEW money (in Britain, we call such people nouveau riche – which is of course French for “new rich”).

And in India, they have the appalling “caste system” – but that’s just them.

In the rest of the World, one’s class and economic status means a life of big cars and houses – or Noddy-cars and garrets.

Which I suppose is fair enough.

I further recall that in my infancy (the Sixties) many things were issued in two forms – there was the standard version for the plebs – and the “deluxe” version for the well-heeled.

However this discrimination died out in the Seventies, as British society headed towards being “classless” – although when it elected the Tories into power, THEY spent the next eighteen-odd years re-establishing the status quo – the gap between rich and poor is greater today than it has been since the Victorian age – a situation which has been echoed by all of The West in general.

And so today, the rich have never been richer – and the poor, poorer. But short of mounting a Revolution, there is little that can be done about it.

Nevertheless, while one may be forced to eat crap in LIFE – one does not care for this to continue after DEATH.

What I mean is, in life, us poor have to endure driving “compact” cars and living in chicken coops – while the monied swan around in Mercs and reside in mansions.

And for those who insist on BURIAL, the discrimination CONTINUES. The rich end up in luxurious tombs – the middle-class get marble headstones – while the rest of us have to settle for granite, or even sandstone.

And the coffins the dead are laid to rest in range from cardboard boxes – to “caskets” that look like Cadillacs.

Thus even in DEATH we remain oppressed.

But not so with CREMATION. Oh sure, a rich person’s ashes can be placed in a solid-gold urn and displayed in a building TRUMP would not mind LIVING in – or even a thousand-foot PYRAMID – but they are still just ASHES.

The process of cremation is CLASSLESS. They stick you in an oven and turn it up to Regulo 11.

After which, the ashes can be placed in a COFFEE TIN. The container matters not – since it is only a temporary vessel. The ashes themselves are what is important.

Once you have those, they can be strewn just about ANYWHERE. A river, a valley – the OCEAN. Anywhere in nature will return the deceased to The Continuum. How much MONEY they had in life will be IRRELEVANT.

Of course – as with a grave – the ex-human’s life-partner or offspring may prefer to KEEP their loved-one’s ashes. If so, instead of paying a fortune to the owners of the local boneyard, they can simply place the urn on their MANTLEPIECE.

Although they might want to CONSIDER that. One last recollection: Once Upon A Time, a young woman called the Police to report her flat had been broken into. They told her to leave everything the way she had found it. She said okay.

When they arrived, they saw a large tin of white powder on the table. It had a label with “Charlie” written on it.

And they noticed a quantity of the powder had been placed on the table and formed into lines – with two straws beside them. The officer looked at the young woman.

She said, “If that WAS what you’re thinking, I would hardly have left it out for YOU to see, would I? Charlie was my DOG – and the morons who broke in here apparently tried to SNORT his remains.”

The first was to awaken in me an interest in music that still lives – and the second was that until I managed to modify the machine using Heath Robinson methods, I could only collect 78s.

Thus, during the first couple of years of the Sixties, I grew to understand and appreciate the popular music of the PAST. And armed with this knowledge, when the Sixties REALLY got going, I was able to relate to it from a far WIDER viewpoint than my peers.

Today, I have expanded their one hundred and fifty shellac discs to nearly five THOUSAND records, audio-tapes, video-tapes and disks. And I recently completed a two-year project, during which I uploaded over one thousand, seven hundred pieces onto YouTube.

Not wishing the collection I had busted my ARSE over, for fifty years, to be lost after my demise – I needed to SHARE this treasure chest. And with YouTube, I have managed to do just that – currently with over TWENTY MILLION people, all over the World.

And one of those gems was this monograph’s titular piece – sung in CHINESE.

When I first heard it – at nine – I thought it was a bright, breezy, jolly piece, with a deceptively complex arrangement.

Only later – as I grew up – did I begin to wonder about it. MISS HUE Lee? Singing Rose, Rose, I love you? Surely the woman must be GAY?

But now, the mystery is solved.

Firstly, the lady in question is not Hue – pronounced as HUGH. Her name is Chinese and was spelled PHONETICALLY. These days, it is spelled YAO.

And secondly, she is NOT singing Rose, Rose, I love you.

The thing is, many Western lyricists listen out for foreign hits that have a good melody – then write an English-language lyric for it.

This is mutually beneficial for both the original composer – and the new lyricist. BOTH get royalties, if the Western version of the piece is a hit.

However, the task is a tricky one. It is no use the lyricist merely translating the original lyric – they will then have to SHARE the lyric royalties with the original lyricist.

And in any case, a translation is fraught with difficulties. You cannot merely translate the lyric, since it has to SCAN – and RHYME.

Thus, when most foreign songs receive a Western “makeover” – in the form of an American lyric – the new lyric has NOTHING TO DO with the original one.

A famous example is Paul Anka’s homage to Frank Sinatra – “My Way” – which originated from France, but with a lyric TOTALLY unrelated to possibly the most-covered song of all time.

And such was “Rose, Rose, I Love You” – which was originally recorded by Yao Lee (in Mandarin) in 1940.

Its “makeover” was penned by a British lyricist called Wilfred Thomas, who totally CHANGED the original lyric, which was about rose PETALS.

And in 1951 the song was recorded, in English, by a MAN – no less than Frankie Laine. And the success of the number was such that Yao Lee’s original version was re-released alongside it.

However, the Mandarin title would have meant nothing to the Western record-buying public – and anyway, the record company was eager to cash in on Frankie’s hit.

And so, despite Yao Lee’s recording being the Chinese version (written in English as “Méigui méigui wǒ ài nǐ” – or in Mandarin as 玫瑰玫瑰我愛你) it had “Rose, Rose, I Love You” as the title on the label.

And where the composers’ names SHOULD have been it merely said, “Sung In Chinese” – which must have SERIOUSLY pissed off the original composers – music: Lin Mei (which was a pen name for Chen Gexin) and lyrics: Wu Cun ( 林枚, 陳歌辛 and 吳村 – respectively).

Anyhoo - if you would like to HEAR this still-vivacious piece, I am leaving this monograph with a link.

However, it is not MY link. While my upload is fine, after uploading it – I discovered ANOTHER. It is “restored” – and while clean-ups are often DIRE (including some of those done by alleged PROFESSIONALS) throttling the LIFE out of the records – THIS one has been skillfully done.

And since us YouTube uploaders are more interested in spreading good music than acquiring HITS – I give you HIS version…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PrvRhaoNN8

The sad thing is that today, I cannot even remember his name. Only that he was thirty-something – and an utter PRAT.

I base the last statement on his previous outings, where he’d posted reports from places I had been to – about things with which I was FAMILIAR. 

Anyhay, back in the late Nineties, this rising star of BBC News was doing a piece on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border and he said – and I SWEAR I’m not making this up – “…we were taken up the Kyber Pass…”

Wha-AT!

I could not believe what I had just heard.

Of course, assuming Auntie’s VT boys weren’t sleeping, the piece HAD to have turned up on a tape-loop in that year’s Internal BBC Christmas Tape – but I had MISSED it. DAMN!

So I am unable to give you a link to it. You will just have to make do with my seventh-gen copy (the chroma for which disappeared around the fourth gen) of a late Seventies IBCT…

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5186653/bbc_internal_christmas_tape_79_uncensored_outtakes_etc/

(You’ll have to turn the “Family Filter” off). Oh, and there’s a quicky I put up at…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPlb4Eu80HY

Enjoy!

This historian was born in 1952 and during the previous four years, two recording media had been introduced which would change the entertainment business for the next half-century (most of this writer’s life) but which thanks to post-war poverty, had done little thus far.

Most people’s record collections consisted solely of 78s – big plastic discs that played for three minutes a side. The only difference was whether they were ten or twelve-inch. The twelve-inch discs gave you another minute a side, but were reserved mostly for classical music – so there was little conflict.

But conflict arose in 1948, when vinyl albums emerged – and singles, the following year.

If a singles collector with five hundred met an album collector with one hundred, the fur would fly. Singles had better dynamics and top tracks, while albums cost more – and the tracks were COMPLETE – and they lasted longer – but they contained “filler” – although they might be stereo – etc., etc. So who had the biggest one?

However, this is about the MEDIA, so let us move on.

The thing is, ALL records, from shellac to vinyl were ANALOGUE. Thus, with care paid to record storage and playing styli, cartridges, tone-arms and so on – they lasted for EVER.

My oldest record was made in ninety-four. EIGHTEEN ninety-four. And it still plays.

But when audio-tape first appeared commercially, around 1950, it started a revolution. For the first time, people could RECORD music.

And when video-tape followed, around a decade later, audio-visual media had ARRIVED.

Of course, it took a couple of decades for either of these formats to become affordable for the plebs, but when it did, collection numbers became irrelevant. UMPTEEN titles could be recorded onto a single tape.

Then, in the early Eighties, the first optical disks began to surface. At this time, they could only be made by factories – but recordable versions arrived two decades later.

Which brings us to NOW. The iPhone and various other solid-state Portable Media Players have provided another quantum leap in the storage of music and image. This time, the media is stored in little flat boxes.

And THAT (finally) brings us to the nub of the problem…

My entire collection of 3,000 records (78s, 45s and albums) weighs in at around a quarter of a ton – but they could be stored on a handful of Blue-Ray disks that could be slipped into a pocket – or a device I could conceal in my hand.

However, the media would now be DIGITAL – while my ANALOGUE RECORDS have survived intact for up to A HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN YEARS. And if cared for, they will last another THOUSAND.

But the thing is, NO-ONE can tell you how long your media will LAST in/on these NEW devices.

The problem began with the advent of recording tape. But it turned out that if you bought a superior brand of tape and kept it away from heat, humidity and strong magnetic fields – it actually lasted quite a while.

However, tape consists of a plastic strip, with an iron oxide sprayed onto it – and there is much to go wrong. In addition to the afore-mentioned heat, humidity and magnetic fields – if the manufacturer goofs up, the plastic can stretch, warp and part company with that all-important iron oxide.

Plus, a bad tape machine transport system can DECIMATE a tape, irreparably.

And all of the same applies to video-tape. Which is why most of the little that remains from the Sixties is on KINESCOPE. The boffins told the technicians tape would FADE. They were wrong – but the damage was done. The Sixties got WIPED.

Of course, when DIGITAL arrived, it meant media could be stored as ones and zeros – thus the analogue quality was unimportant and you could copy it without loss. But you still needed to STORE it somehow.

This author has had the devil of a job restoring pictures he took only thirty, forty years ago. They were taken on various films and processed in various labs and while some were still fine – others had gone RED.

However, most of my audio- and video-tapes are still good (despite some of the VTs being over thirty years old – and a few of the audio-cassettes, FORTY) – but will they survive as long as Miss Alice Raymonde’s New York recording of Sousa’s “Love Me Little, Love Me Long” has done? (Yes, it’s that 1894 record of mine). Probably not.

For decades, I recorded onto tape – then early in the last decade, I went over to disk. But how long will THOSE recordings last?

Then again, why CARE? After all, I’ll probably DIE in about twenty years – and who lives for 117 years anyway? Why not just leave archiving to the experts and enjoy the fruits of their labours?

And that is a fair point. Now that YouTube and iTunes are here, music has become largely transitory. If you want to hear something – just download it.

But the problem with that is archivists are less than perfect – and they do not archive EVERYTHING. Some of the ANALOGUE pieces I have uploaded to YouTube are WAY better quality than you will find on ANY website. And there is plenty you will not find at ALL.

Thus, collections still have value – but on modern media, how long will they LAST? A few days ago, the Western Black Rhino was declared extinct. How long before a HUNDRED YEARS of our musical heritage goes the same way?

In the final analysis, media falls into two categories: items that are important to us – and those that are important to the World.

Thus, when choosing a storage facility for your PERSONAL media, you only have to worry about its existence during the time YOU have left. But Elvis, The Beatles, Sinatra et al are IMMORTAL – they need SPECIAL consideration.

The electronics giants seek only to constantly bombard us with new gear. They care nothing for our heritage – just our MONEY. So if you want to preserve the creative output of the kings and queens of the Century Of Entertainment, you need to get SERIOUS.

Before it is TOO LATE.

I could scan some into this monograph – but I will spare you, my reader. Suffice to say, they are not nice.

Elsewhere in these scribblings I have pointed out that you could just as easily feature pictures of obese kids on junk food packaging and flattened pedestrians on the inner plastic layer of car windscreens.

But where would it stop?

So when the tobacco corporations succeeded in getting the issue MIRED in the American Injustice System (easily the worst in the developed World) I was pleased.

But my joy was somewhat tempered by my realisation that this “victory” merely represents a cynical manoeuver by the giant, greedy, corrupt tobacco corporations – using America’s inept legal system – to ensure their coffers continue filling.

And the funds in those coffers will be sufficient to finance America’s “finest” legal minds for DECADES to come.

Which is ironic, given that it was America’s corrupt system that came up with the bogus notion of “second-hand smoke” in the first place – a notion that has resulted in MY fag packs being plastered with these obscenities.

But at least HERE – said packs only cost me 77p (US$1.24) a pop…

A few weeks back, I saw a bit on TV about a lake in America – Leno was taking the mickey and fluffing its pronunciation – but I KNEW HOW to pronounce it.

Phonetically, it sounds like “chagoggagoggnamchagagoggchabumagungamaugg” – and I can actually SAY it – AND know what it MEANS.

It’s a native American word for “you fish on your side, I fish on my side and no-one fish in the middle.”

It just happens to be one of those obscure things I LEARNED, when a child.

Like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – I can actually SAY it!

Another is sulphasuccinatedundecalenicmonoalkalollomide (Biomin: the ingredient in Vosene shampoo that gets rid of dandruff – I learned that one while sitting in the bath).

Then, in the Seventies, I mastered Bill Mitchell’s “Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalk inhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin – PEPSI!”

All utterly useless of course – they don’t get you girls – or boys. Possibly a punch in the mouth from some yobbo is all.

But if I’d been in that audience of The Tonight Show a few weeks ago – Leno would have got a HECKLE!

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Hi – how much is the grandfather’s clock?”

“We call them long case clocks, sir.”

“Whatever. My wife’s always wanted one. How much is it?”

“Ah – well, that particular model is quite well sought after…”

“How MUCH?”

“Eight hundred and fifty pounds, sir.”

“Wow. I didn’t realize… okay. Can you deliver it?”

“Certainly, sir. But I’m afraid that will be an extra one hundred and twenty-five pounds.”

“A HUNDRED AND… but I only live two streets away.”

“Yes sir – but I’m afraid that’s our flat rate. You see, we do not have our own vehicle – so we have to rent one for the day, then hire a chap, then secure the item into the…”

“Yeah, yeah. Look – do you have a piece of rope?”

“I think we may have some out the back…”

So having paid for the clock, Walter got the dealer to tie it to his back. Then he tilted himself forward and told the man to open the door for him.

As he staggered slowly along the pavement, he began regretting his impulsiveness – the cumbersome timepiece was HEAVY. Plus, it bore down on the back of his head, making it hard to see where he was going.

After a few minutes, he reached the crossing at the corner of his street and tried to look both ways. But hampered by the clock, he could only see a few yards in either direction.

Finally, hearing nothing coming, he began crossing the street.

But just then, a boy-racer in a Golf GTI that had seen better days raced around the corner and caught the end of the clock.

BANG! Bits of grandfather clock flew in all directions and Walter was left spinning in the middle of the road, like a deranged top.

Two chaps sitting outside a pub had seen the whole thing.

“Look at the state of that poor chap.”

“I’ve no sympathy for him.”

“Really? Why not?”

“He should have worn a wristwatch, like everyone else.”